On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 11:10:56AM -0500, Jacob Schmude wrote: > Hi Everyone > I've run into an interesting issue with orca on Opensuse 11.1. If I load up > an application that is based on a toolkit that requires scripts (e.g. > Openoffice, Firefox, etc) Orca stops speaking for that application. Nothing > reads at all, no menu bar, no main window, no flat review. The only thing > orca will tell me is the window title, so I know the application itself has > loaded. Other applications such as pidgin which is scripted but doesn't use > a different toolkit are fine. I can access the app-specific preferences > with orca+ctrl+space, which leads me to believe the scripts are loading. > Also, when quitting or closing one of these problem applications, orca > seems to have a 50/50 chance of freezing up. > I've tried both with the 2.24 version of orca that comes with opensuse and > using the 2.25.4 version in factory with the same results. Anyone know > what's going on here? Is this an orca problem or is something else going on > with my opensuse installation? > > Hi Jacob, Your problem is due to the fast that openSUSE 11.1 included some GNOME-related changes that created accessibility problems. You will be interested in this thread: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2008-December/msg00319.html Specifically this: "there was a change in Gtk+ and gnome-settings-daemon that affected the accessibility of non-Gtk+ apps that use Gtk+. So that includes at least Open Office, Firefox, and Mono Windows Forms" I did say "hopefully be a matter of a few days at most," but I underestimated the time it takes to get updates through to the proper channels and out to users :( Even with the patches that my team has been working on, applications (like Open Office and FireFox), will need to implement some changes on their end. I believe FireFox has already done this in their latest code. But again, how long this will all take to get to the end user, I don't know. Unfortunately, I would recommend to anyone needing accessibility tools to use openSUSE 11.0 for now, and to not upgrade to a distro that uses GNOME 2.24 until verifying that there is a fix for your distro. Thanks, Brian
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